President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort." It's no secret that many of my clients belong to the LGBTQ community. I've worked hard to build a following in a demographic that should consider me an outsider; there is a real fear of being judged by anyone who doesn't routinely walk in their shoes. However, my client base hasn't always looked like this, and the road to building trust has been interesting to say the least. Why go through trouble? The simple answer is, “Because I love doing it!”
Your job as an image maker gives you the ability to change minds
I firmly believe that all people deserve equal treatment, both under the law and in our business relationships. I'm thrilled when an alternative lifestyle couple asks me to shoot their wedding and feel that it's my professional duty to do so. But am I just doing my job, or am I trying to make a statement? Honestly, I'd say it's a bit of both. I want my work to be in the public eye because not only is it good for business, but it's helpful to the cause. I want to take beautiful portraits of transgender people, not because I'm going to make a lot of money off of it, but because I believe it helps to normalize that lifestyle and build awareness, thereby reducing fear. But does that make me unprofessional? Does that make me a flag-carrying liberal as opposed to a person offering their services to whomever may want them?
During the civil rights movement of the 60's, there were those that dared to step across lines and serve those that could not gain services elsewhere. There were those that stood up and said that all were welcome to their business, regardless of the color of their skin, often to great personal risk. Don't get me wrong here. I'm not including myself with those people. I'm not getting beat up alongside those I serve. I'm not receiving death threats. My kids aren't being threatened because I serve someone that the general population fears. I'm just doing my job. But my job happens to be making people look their best. My job happens to be documenting life. I'm also passionate about making changes in my community that promote equality. It makes me excited to pick up a camera and not only make a buck, but also make the world a tiny bit better.
Buck Angel - Transgender activist and adult film actor
DJ Robot 5000
Bring yourself to your work
Find your passion. Turn your excitement into motivation to find a client that's underserved. Find your niche. Your interests make you unique. What gets you fired up? For me, it's civil rights, but it need not be so lofty. Are you an avid animal lover? Start marketing to pet advocacy groups. Are you die-hard fisherman? Contact a conservation group and work with them. When you create work that reflects your passion, you will not only be taking photos of things you care about, but you will build a clientele of followers who know and trust you. It's win-win.
Savannah Summers - drag performer
Unprofessional? By who's standards?
There are some in the photographic community that say not to mix politics with work. They say that you will alienate part of your potential client base and that's bad for business. I can't say I disagree with those points, but in the end, I will not be relegated to being a glorified button pusher. Of course, we don't live in some pie in the sky world where every job you do is going to erase world hunger. I realize that you are going to have to take jobs that mean little to you. But don't let that be your norm. The skill of photography is worth more than that. Nothing gets you burned out in this industry faster than crapping out a ton of work that you care little to nothing about. Yes, you may scare off some clients, but your efforts will win you new ones that not only share your viewpoint, but you would never have had access to had you not reached out.
Bobby - dancer and entertainer
What are you doing to feed the fire inside you? Are you on your way to being burned out or are you creating photos that mean something? Sound off and let us know how you're keeping the passion alive!
Commercial photographer here who just happens to be a gay man of color! What you've done humanizes us, makes us real, and shows us in some pretty fantastic light and I say THANK YOU! And I'm pretty sure I can say that you're not an outsider in our world, not with this body of work. Kudos to you for this!
I don't see it the same way. You said in this article "I firmly believe that all people deserve equal treatment, both under the law and in our business relationships." How does that even make sense?
Today it's impossible to truly achieve what you say you believe in. For instance, if I'm a photographer who believes the gay lifestyle violates my conscience as a human being, I'm being denied my respect and dignity under the law just because I want to follow my conscience. Not very equal. By your definition it's impossible to satisfy my right of equal treatment as a professional photographer who reserves the right to photograph who and what I want, and at the same time satisfy the LGBT community's requirement that I must treat everyone the same, since both positions are opposite. Someone must lose. The answer is not equality, but respect and dignity. The photographer who doesn't want to record the gay wedding should not be punished for not doing so and should be allowed the respect and dignity he or she deserves, but that's not what's happening. Those who would like to be treated with respect and dignity by the LGBT community are finding they are under attack, and are being treated as anything BUT equals under the law and in the business community.
Today's world is sick, because it believes equal means that we are all the same, or should be, and that's heartbreaking. We are not all the same, nor should we want to be. Individuality is a beautiful aspect of humanity and should be celebrated and photographed for what it is, not destroyed in the name of equality. Each of us is different in our own special way - yes we are DIFFERENT. With that said we also have common qualities that make us all human. Each of us should be treated with respect and dignity for that reason alone and we should treat others in the same way, but that doesn't mean being crushed by those who disagree with you in order to make it all equal. In today's world, thanks to the militant gay movement and others, my rights as a photographer and as a human being that deserves to be respected enough to let me serve whom I will without repercussion have been obliterated. I am not being treated with respect or the dignity I deserve, because today I must judge what I do based not on my free will, but on fear of legal action, attack from militant groups, and undo pressure from society.
You say: "During the civil rights movement of the 60's, there were those that dared to step across lines and serve those that could not gain services elsewhere." Don't compare today's LGBT community with the civil rights era - that's insulting to those who went through the civil rights movement. If a photographer respectively declines a gay wedding, that couple can easily find another photographer, unlike blacks in the 60's south who were hard pressed to find businesses that would let them in the door, or political leaders who had sympathy for them. Today's gay community is seeing nothing compared to what the Blacks, the Irish, Native Americans, and others faced in the past. In fact today's world embraces the gay movement as being chic, and anyone who disagrees is ostracized very quickly being called bigoted and intolerant. If the LGBT movement is a civil rights movement, it's a civil rights movement being fought not by the homosexual, but by those who are not homosexual in their struggle to keep their dignity and respect against the ever mounting tide of discrimination rising against those who want nothing more than to keep their freedom of choice. That's a recipe for disaster, because when you seek to change people not by their hearts, but by using the law and social pressure it's a bad idea. Personally, I'm tired of self-serving articles like this one that seek not civil-rights, but civil war, disguising it as tolerance and equality.
This was a really long-winded way of saying something really stupid.